


Elegance

by therune



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 15:40:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3295778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therune/pseuds/therune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>katzedecimal said: Hartley invents hella sonic gloves. Wally and James are unimpressed and give him a hard time about gloves not being terribly musical. (Miiiiiight be influenced by last night’s episode)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elegance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Katzedecimal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katzedecimal/gifts).



Wally responded to a 911 call talking about a costumed crook on top of the downtown bank. While he raced towards the scene, he went over the possibilities in his head. Discarding the rogues currently in jail (all except Rainbow Raider who was either on holiday in Greece or painting in a basement, depending on whom you believed), only four options really remained: a villain trying to expand to the Twin Cities, a new guy, Piper or the Trickster. Piper had reformed years ago and was his best friend. Trickster had not so much as reformed as stopped doing just crime. At least not when people could see it. Even Piper had warned Wally about him. He kind of wished for a new guy.  
Wally raced up the side of the building and spotted the costumed man, feet dangling over the edge. Not his day, apparently.  
"Hello James."  
"Twinkletoes."  
"Could you stop calling me that? It wasn’t funny when I was still Kid Flash."  
"I disagree."  
James was smiling at him and that never bode well. Not that pretty much anything he ever did bode well for anything.  
"Is there a particular reason you’re sitting on the bank?"  
"I tried to draw you out."  
Red alert.  
"And why would you do that?"  
Wally supposed he should be grateful that all the Trickster had done was sit somewhere while he could have easily done things like give the Flash museum a paint job, disrupted traffic or actually robbed the bank.  
"I’m bored."  
RED alert. Bored was the least thing you wanted the Trickster to be. That’s when he got inventive.  
"There’s plenty of things to do," Wally tried, "lots and lots of fun stuff - that’s not illegal," he added as he remembered whom he was talking to.  
The Trickster made a non-commital handwave. “Don’t feel like doing any of that.”  
"You should take on a hobby. I hear scrap-booking is very rewarding."  
"Messing with you is much more fun, though." There was it, the Trickster grin.  
Wally tried to defuse the situation. He was certain that he could take the Trickster, but that man always had two aces up his sleeve and three back-up plans, one more ludicrous than the other.  
"You’re reformed, come on. Why don’t you talk to Piper? You’re friends, I’m sure you could find something fun and harmless and legal to do."  
That’s the problem. I wanted to talk to Piper, but he’s busy. And now I’m bored and I’ve been itching to see if I could build a paint-cannon.”  
"What’s Piper doing?" Wally was curious. He hadn’t seen Piper in almost a week.  
"Inventing."  
"That’s non-commital."  
"All I know is that he’s been busy for days and doesn’t want to hang out. And that he enforced that with a force field around his apartment, so it must be pretty important. And strictly a solo-thing, otherwise he would have asked me for help."  
"Is that a thing he regularly does?"  
"It happens more often than you’d think."  
"I’m not exactly comforted by that."  
A quick grin. “You weren’t supposed to be.”  
"We could…hang?" Wally asked, surprised by what he had just said.  
"Why does that sound as if you’re offering me your firstborn?"  
"I know you. I’ve known you for…15 years or something. I can’t think of a single situation where I had two options and went ‘oh great, party with the Trickster’."  
"There was this actual party I invited you to. And you came!"  
"Ok, a single situation then."  
That had been a fun party. Shortly after Barry had been gone and Wally had taken over the mantle, he had gotten an invitation to a Rogues’ party. Was that for Captain Cold’s birthday? He couldn’t quite remember, but he had taken Connie, Chunk had shown up and the whole thing basically exploded. It had been a hell of a party before. Reminded him that his foes, compared to other people he faced over the years, were human and maybe not exactly decent, but sort-of-alright.Of course they had returned to villainy shortly after and he had cursed himself for not ending the party another way, but it had been fun at the time.  
"We could play darts?" Wally suggested.  
"Can we bet on the outcome?"  
Wally shot him a hard look.  
"Fine."

Wally figured that at least keeping the Trickster confined to a single location would minimize the chaos he could cause.  
While he was gone for 20 minutes to help out with a collapsing bridge in Oregon, the Trickster had apparently gotten into a backroom poker tournament with several gangsters. Wally came back to the bar and found him sitting behind a neatly stocked pile of poker chips, and beside him were three middle-aged men. And they were naked. The poker game had turned into the strip variant at some point which James had also won. Wally interrupted the game when one of the gangsters had pulled a gun on James and had left the men tied up in front of a police station.  
"How do you manage to get into so much trouble in so little time? You don’t even have superspeed to account for that!"  
"That’s called ‘talent’."

Then the Trickster made him drop him off at a charity where he stuffed the money he had exchanged for the chips from a frightened bartender who turned out to be a former hitman - another trip to the police station - along with the clothes and the playing cards into the donation box.  
"That’s surprisingly positive."  
"It’s prudent."

"Do you think we should check on Piper?" Wally asked, "I am getting worried. After all, it’s…"  
"Piper on his own for almost a week. Yeah, we should probably check."  
Wally took them there and rang the bell before James could finish telling him of his wonderful idea that had to be awful no matter what it was.  
"Piper, hey, you’re okay?"  
They heard a loud crash like someone had tripped over one of the numerous mechanical parts lying on the floor. Then footsteps neared the door and it was opened.  
Piper was wearing safety goggles, hair in a messy pony-tail and what looked like knight’s gauntlets on his hands.  
"I think we came just in time," James announced. When had he gotten behind Wally’s back to hide?  
"Flash! James, so glad you came!" He yanked them both inside.  
"I was fascinated by the application of sonic waves of a specially tuned frequency, but the mechanical parts proved to be cumbersome. You’ve seen the sonic bazooka, and -" Piper had started to walk through his room, and as expected, nearly every surface that wasn’t covered in a musical instrument was covered in various mechanical parts. The Trickster had just bent down to pick up some part that Wally couldn’t identify but decided to file under "things the Trickster should never have" anyway and yanked him along.  
"Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the bazooka, there are just some days when you need an extra ‘oomph’ and raw power and have I mentioned how much I love it?"  
"Your point?" James reminded Piper.  
"Adaptability! Effectiveness! Elegance!"  
Wally blinked.  
"So, the solution is….gloves?" James asked.  
"Yes! Portable, light, but pack the same punch! It’s beautiful!"  
He thrust the gloves in their direction. “Aren’t they amazing?”  
Before he could even open his mouth, Wally received a sharp elbow between the ribs.  
"Elegant, certainly. Powerful, too, if they pack the same punch your guns do. But, music man,"  
"Yes?"  
"Gloves aren’t terribly musical, are they?" Wally intervened.  
"Well, no, but… they."  
And now Wally felt bad for seeing the joy leave his friend.  
"Piper, have you thought about safety issues?" James asked.  
"What do you mean?"  
"Well, the flute and the gun, someone would need to wrestle them from you first, but the gloves-"  
James’ hands darted forward and he was gripping Piper gloves. “are easy to remove.”  
Piper scratched his forehead with his real hand and left a smudge of soot in its wake.  
"But great idea, really." Wally added. "Very…elegant."  
"And have you thought about versatility? Back-ups? How can you play one of your flutes with fingers that big? You couldn’t even pull the trigger on one of your guns!"  
"But," Piper slung an arm around James’ shoulders, "I could pack the necessary components into a small pack to go on the back of my hand and wear leather gloves to retain flexibility! Yes! Keep a back-up battery pack in a gun holster!" Piper’s eyes almost glowed as he gripped James’ shoulders tightly. "I could use both at the same time!"  
James grinned. “And that’s why you use me as your sounding board.”  
He clapped Piper on the shoulder with one of the gloves he was still holding.  
"You go take a shower, I order take-out and get my toolkit."

Wally suddenly felt like the third wheel. “I’ll just…show myself out.”  
"Bye!" Piper called halfway into the shower.  
The Trickster gave him one of the grins that made Wally feel uncomfortable.  
"Thanks for a fun afternoon, Twinkletoes."  
Then he slammed the door in Wally’s face. Before he left, Wally could hear him call out “Hey, have you made any progress on that dj weapon of yours?”  
He decided to leave well enough alone. At least Piper was a reasonable responsible adult. Reliable old Piper. He’d just know that at some point later down the road he’d be thinking back to this exact moment and ask why he didn’t nip the whole thing in the bud. Thing probably turning out to be a menace like the giant sentient music note. But that was a worry for another time, and he had just gotten a call on his Watchtower communicator anyway. Time to save people from a burning building and worry about Piper later.


End file.
